THE CROODS Blu-ray & DVD ReviewBy: MattInRC
Although it's early to start handing out awards for best animated, consider this week's Blu-ray release of THE CROODS as a strong candidate.

As we mentioned in our year-end article, 2012 brought us several terrific films throughout the year, including several; animated ones that made it to this year's Oscars. Bolstered by long lines and positive reviews, animated films are enjoying a resurgence among filmgoers. Dreamworks' THE CROODS is an impressive adventure about cavemen and the coming of the New World. Its arrival onto Blu-ray this week looks and sounds amazing, with only a decent supply of supplements.

The Movie - 4/5
Eep Crood (voiced by Emma Stone) is a prehistoric cavewoman who wants more than the dull and defensive existence she and her family have been provided by her father Grug (voiced by Nicholas Cage). According to him, cave people should hide from larger animals, stay indoors at night, and generally be p…

Christian Grey no more! Universal Pictures and Focus Features have announced that Charlie Hunnam will be replaced in the highly anticipated film adaption of E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey due to his busy schedule.

"The filmmakers of Fifty Shades of Grey and Charlie Hunnam have agreed to find another male lead given Hunnam's immersive TV schedule which is not allowing him time to adequately prepare for the role of Christian Grey," the studios said in a joint statement on Saturday, Oct. 12.

After a tireless search, Hunnam, 33, was finally confirmed on Sept. 2 to take on the lead role of Grey alongside actress Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele. "So... Christian…" James teased via Twitter at the time. "The gorgeous and talented Charlie Hunnam will be Christian Grey in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey."

And now? "I wish Charlie all the best. x," the author of the three book series wrote just moments after the shocking shakeup.

Win Tickets To An Advance For Screening For JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA on Tuesday, October 22 @ 7PM @ Century Stadium 14 in Sacramento.

JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA is an upcoming American comedy film directed by Jeff Tremaine and written by Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville, and Spike Jonze. The film will star Johnny Knoxville and Jackson Nicoll. It was produced by MTV Films and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Bad Grandpa has a loose plot that connects the stunts and pranks together as opposed to the three original Jackass films which had no plot.

86-year-old Irving Zisman and Billy are on a road trip across the United States. Irving is tasked with taking his grandson to live with his father after his mother is jailed. Interspersed with the brief story segments are hidden camera pranks and stunts.

Kario Salem wrote the script and the King family is expected to support the long-gestating project

Jamie Foxx is in talks to play Martin Luther King Jr. in a biopic that Oliver Stone is in negotiations to direct for DreamWorks and Warner Bros., three individuals familiar with the long-gestating project have told TheWrap.

Oscar winners Foxx and Stone previously worked together on 1999′s football drama “Any Given Sunday,” which helped put Foxx on the map as a major movie star.

Warner Bros. had no comment.

Steven Spielberg will produce for DreamWorks along with Suzanne de Passe, Madison Jones and Sam Nappi, while several members of the King family are expected to serve as executive producers on the project.

DreamWorks acquired the rights to King’s story in 2009 along with the rights to his “I Have a Dream” speech. In April 2011, the company decided to team up with Warner Bros., which had been developing its own MLK movie with Salem, who spent three years doing research and interviews to i…

The last time Emma Watson collaborated with writer-director Stephen Chbosky, we got the delightful The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, which Chbosky adapted from his novel. They’re reuniting for a new project, this time working from Adena Halpern’s novel 29 for a film called While We’re Young.

This time, however, Chbosky is handing over script duties to (500) Days Of Summer duo Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter for a plot that appears to find a new way to tell a well-used fictional staple: the body-swap.

We’re introduced to a 75-year-old woman who still wants to squeeze as much out of life as possible, and who is happier spending time with her 29-year-old granddaughter than her 55-year-old daughter. On her birthday, she’s granted one wish and becomes 29 again for a day, spending it having an adventure with her granddaughter.

Watch the featurette ‘Chiwetel Ejiofor becomes Solomon Northrup from 12 YEARS A SLAVE.

12 YEARS A SLAVE is based on an incredible true story of one man's fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty (personified by a malevolent slave owner, portrayed by Michael Fassbender) as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (Brad Pitt) forever alters his life.

JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA is an upcoming American comedy film directed by Jeff Tremaine and written by Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville, and Spike Jonze. The film will star Johnny Knoxville and Jackson Nicoll. It was produced by MTV Films and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Bad Grandpa has a loose plot that connects the stunts and pranks together as opposed to the three original Jackass films which had no plot.

86-year-old Irving Zisman and Billy are on a road trip across the United States. Irving is tasked with taking his grandson to live with his father after his mother is jailed. Interspersed with the brief story segments are hidden camera pranks and stunts.

Sony Pictures is readying for the December 18 release of The Monuments Men — the Oscar-season sweet spot — with the latest trailer to drop. George Clooney directs and heads the cast of the thriller about a World War II platoon of art historians and museum directors tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue priceless art from the Nazis. Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett also star.

Win Tickets To An Advance For Screening For JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA on Tuesday, October 22 @ 7PM @ AMC Metreon In San Francisco.

JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA is an upcoming American comedy film directed by Jeff Tremaine and written by Jeff Tremaine, Johnny Knoxville, and Spike Jonze. The film will star Johnny Knoxville and Jackson Nicoll. It was produced by MTV Films and distributed by Paramount Pictures. Bad Grandpa has a loose plot that connects the stunts and pranks together as opposed to the three original Jackass films which had no plot.

86-year-old Irving Zisman and Billy are on a road trip across the United States. Irving is tasked with taking his grandson to live with his father after his mother is jailed. Interspersed with the brief story segments are hidden camera pranks and stunts.

The action-packed western starring January Jones, Ed Harris, Jason Aldean, Jason Isaacs and Eduardo Noriega is in theaters. Check out a film clip below. Sweetwater is also available on VOD and Digital.

In the late 1800’s, a beautiful former prostitute (January Jones: "Mad Men") is trying to build an honest life with her husband in the rugged plains of New Mexico. When she catches the eye of a sadistic and powerful religious leader (Jason Isaacs: Harry Potter series), her life is violently turned upside down. She embarks on a bloody course of vengeance with the assistance of a renegade sheriff (Ed Harris: Pollock, The Hours, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13) who has pretty violent tendencies of his own.

Fox Searchlight Pictures announced that director Jean-Marc Vallée began principal photography in Oregon this week on WILD. The film stars Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon (WALK THE LINE, MUD). The screenplay is adapted by Oscar nominated writer Nick Hornby (AN EDUCATION, High Fidelity) from author Cheryl Strayed’s NY Times #1 best-seller Wild, the book that re-launched Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. Pacific Standard’s Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea (WARM BODIES, ALL GOOD THINGS) are producing with River Road Entertainment’s Oscar nominated Bill Pohlad (THE TREE OF LIFE, 12 YEARS A SLAVE). The film’s executive producers are Hornby, Bergen Swanson (THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT) and Nathan Ross (DALLAS BUYERS CLUB), Vallée's producing partner.

Thanks to Universal Studios Home Entertainment we are going to give away limited copies of the THE WORLD’S MOST DEMONIC DOLL, CURSE OF CHUCKY (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet)

AN ALL-NEW MOVIE FROM THE FILMMAKERS OF THE UNFORGETTABLE HORROR FRANCHISE ARRIVES JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN ON BLU-RAY™ COMBO PACK WITH DVD INCLUDING ULTRAVIOLET™ OUT NOW.

Terror returns in a deceptively tiny package when Curse of Chucky, the newest installment of the chilling Child’s Play franchise, comes exclusively to Blu-Ray™ and DVD on October 8, 2013, from Universal 1440 Entertainment, a production entity of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Also available on Digital on September 24, 2013, Curse of Chucky reunites franchise creators Don Mancini and David Kirschner as Chucky returns to horrify viewers in an all-new, unrated chapter of the blood-soaked suspense saga that James Oster of ArrowInTheHead.com gleefully calls “Delightfully deadly.”

The Somali pirate pressure-cooker Captain Phillips is less a story about the attempted theft of a cargo ship in 2009, instead treading into dangerous water about American values and our military supremacy. But the story of the American Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) - who's later kidnapped by four desperate boys with machine guns - is simply too long, sacrificing effect for buildup. Phillips is the hard-working no-fuss captain whose home life is filled with worries about his children and the fact that his wife (Catherine Keener) doesn't like him taking jobs so far away. She has reason to worry, as the Somalis in 2009 were pirating ships with such frequency that US destroyers were sent out to patrol the African coast. Phillips' ship is commandeered by four Somalis, including their leader Muse (Barkhad Abdi), whose jagged teeth and frail appearance mirr…

Director John Lee Hancock has been brought in to work on Maleficent, Disney's big-budget live-action retelling of the Sleeping Beauty tale that stars Angelina Jolie.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the movie is about to get a round of reshoots. Hancock, who wrote and directed The Blind Side and wrote Snow White and the Huntsman, penned several new scenes to be shot. Hancock also will help oversee the reshoots by the film's director, Robert Stromberg, a production designer making his directorial debut on the $200 million-budgeted fantasy.

"We asked him to be on set," producer Joe Roth says of Hancock. "He's not directing. He wrote pages, and I hired a first-time director, and it's good to have him on set." Asked why a film of this magnitude was entrusted to a novice director, Roth notes that Stromberg won Oscars for production design on Alice in Wonderland and Avatar. "The movie is gorgeous to look at, and the last 75 minutes are really…

Defiance is the first of its kind. A convergence of television and multi-platform videogame featuring an interconnected world that evolves together -- series and videogame -- into one story. The year is 2046 and more than three decades have passed since aliens arrived, changing life on Earth forever. In the frontier town of Defiance, a drifter-turned-lawkeeper, Nolan (Bowler, True Blood), and Mayor Rosewater (Julie Benz, Dexter) attempt to lead the human and alien residents through the prejudices and politics that threaten the fragile peace they've fought for.

Triggering our age of high-stakes secrecy, explosive news leaks and the trafficking of classified information, WikiLeaks forever changed the game. Now, in a dramatic thriller based on real events, “The Fifth Estate” reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century’s most fiercely debated organization. The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations com…

As “Carrie” prepares to scare up big business at the box office, Chloe Moretz has agreed to star in “November Criminals,” which British filmmaker Sacha Gervasi (“Hitchcock”) has rewritten and will direct for Indian Paintbrush, multiple individuals familiar with the project have told TheWrap.

Based on the 2011 novel by Sam Munson and initially adapted by Steven Knight (“Eastern Promises”), story is set in Washington D.C. and follows a rebellious teenager who finds himself leading his own investigation into the murder of a classmate.

Moretz is attached to play the female lead of Phoebe, and Gervasi is currently casting the hotly-contested male lead.

Indian Paintbrush principal Steven Rales will produce with Beth O’Neil, who previously produced Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directorial debut “Jack Goes Boating” with Big Beach Films. Knight will executive produce the film, which could start shooting as soon as late January 2014.

After receiving rave reviews for his work on “Short Term 12,” Destin Cretton may have landed his next big gig: He is in early negotiations to direct Lionsgate’s “The Glass Castle,” starring Jennifer Lawrence.

Cretton would also rewrite the script with Andrew Lanham. Marti Noxon wrote the first draft of the adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ 2005 bestselling memoir.

The story follows a young girl raised in dysfunctional family with an eccentric artist mother and an alcoholic father who would stir the the children’s imagination with hope as a distraction to their poverty.

The film is being produced by Lawrence and Gil Netter. Lionsgate’s Erik Feig, Gillian Bohrer and James Myers are overseeing the project for the studio.

Lionsgate has been highly motivated to get anything Lawrence-related off the ground. The “Hunger Games” star’s film project “Burial Rites,” with Gary Ross attached to direct, was just picked up by Lionsgate for distribution.

THE INEVITABLE DEFEAT OF MISTER AND PETE – In Theaters on Friday, October 11

From Codeblack Films and Lionsgate. During a sweltering summer in New York City, 13-year-old Mister's (Brooks) hard-living mother (Hudson) is apprehended by the police, leaving the boy and nine-year-old Pete (Dizon) alone to forage for food while dodging child protective services and the destructive scenarios of the Brooklyn projects. Faced with more than any child can be expected to bear, the resourceful Mister nevertheless feels he is an unstoppable force against seemingly unmovable obstacles. But what really keeps the pair in the survival game is much more Mister's vulnerability than his larger-than-life attitude. THE INEVITABLE DEFEAT OF MISTER AND …

The Incredibly Ambitious and Star-Laden Film Revisits Theaters with a new HD Restoration from the Original Film Materials.

Drafthouse Films announces a first-time theatrical platform release for the full-length cut of the phantasmagoric 1979 sci-fi/horror hybrid The Visitor. The film will open in a dozen cities starting Halloween weekend before rolling out into additional markets throughout November and the rest of the year. The repertory title will be hitting the big screen in major markets including Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Portland and San Francisco. A VOD/digital and home entertainment release will follow in January, 2014.

Legendary Hollywood director/actor John Huston (The Maltese Falcon; Treasure Of The Sierra Madre) stars as an intergalactic warriorbattling alongside a cosmic…

Production has begun in southwest France on “The Hundred-Foot Journey,” based on the best-selling novel by Richard C. Morais. Starring Academy Award®-winner Helen Mirren, and directed by Oscar® nominee Lasse Hallström, the film will be released on August 8, 2014 in the U.S.

In “The Hundred-Foot Journey,” Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) is a culinary ingénue with the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Displaced from their native India, the Kadam family, led by Papa (Om Puri), settles in the quaint village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. Filled with charm, it is both picturesque and elegant – the ideal place to settle down and open an Indian restaurant, the Maison Mumbai. That is, until the chilly chef proprietress of Le Saule Pleureur, a Michelin starred, classical French restaurant run by Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), gets wind of it. Her icy protests against the new Indian restaurant a hundred feet from her own escalate to all out war between the two establishme…

In case you were wondering, 47 Ronin is not your average jidaigeki flick. There are dragons, goblins and Keanu Reeves swinging a katana like a man possessed: things you definitely wouldn't have seen in the other 46 ronin films.

We know what you're thinking: finally, a trailer that isn't afraid to show a little scaly ankle. Yes, an actual dragon. It's the handiwork of Framestore, the British effects house, and looks fair set to find its way to whatever the samurai equivalent of Laketown is for a showdown with Reeves and his band of warriors.

Story-wise, 47 Ronin finds a group of warriors in disarray when a treacherous warlord kills their master and banishes their kind. The 47 leaderless samurai seek vengeance and vow to restore honour to their people. Driven from their homes and dispersed across the land, this band of Ronin must seek the help of Kai (Reeves), a half-breed they once rejected, as they fight their way across a savage world of mythic beasts, shape-shifting …

Like a ghoul creeping across a darkened room, Halloween is on the way. You can feel it. Your bones can feel it. Your skin can feel it. Yet it’s not just humans who can get spooked – toys are just as susceptible. At least, that’s the idea behind Pixar’s Toy Story Of Terror, which reunites Buzz, Woody and the rest of the gang for a hair-raising TV special. The first clip is now online.

What starts out as a fun road trip for Woody, Buzz and friends takes an unexpected turn for the worse when the journey detours to a roadside motel. After one of the toys goes missing, the others find themselves caught up in a mysterious sequence of events that must be solved before they all suffer the same fate...

The short sees the return of Tom Hanks as Woody, Tim Allen as Buzz, Joan Cusack as Jessie, Timothy Dalton as Mr. Pricklepants, Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head, Wallace Shawn as Rex and Kristen Schaal as Trixie. It’ll be on US screens on October 16

Since handing back the keys to the TARDIS (though he’ll be on our screens until he regenerates into Peter Capaldi this Christmas), soon to be ex-Doctor Who star Matt Smith has been striking out in very different directions. He’ll be a strange character in Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut How To Catch A Monster and is now set to step into Christian Bale’s fashionable loafers for an American Psycho musical.

The Almeida Theatre in London's West End is working up the musical, with Rupert Gould directing a book written by Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark’s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and lyrics from Glee’s Duncan Sheik.

Like the Bret Easton Ellis book and, more likely Mary Harron’s 2000 film adaptation, the musical will follow the murderous mayhem of New York investment banker Patrick Bateman as he chops up rivals, prostitutes and anyone who gets in his way.

Will Huey Lewis get a look in? It’s doubtful given rights issues and the fact the musical will feature original songs.

The stars are aligning on behalf of Autism for the Holidays! For all the Star Trek, Star Wars and Game of Thrones fans, please consider publicizing this exclusive promotion where stars Mark Hamill (Star Wars), Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) and Michael Dorn (Star Trek) have donated their kind time and efforts to record personalized statements for fans on behalf of Autism Speaks. Please let the fans know and support the autistic community.